Size Does Matter: Stinging

[x-traction.livejournal.com]

Julio and Terry join day two of the searching. They have a bit of a bug problem. Or do they?

"We could split up a bit, cover more ground?"> Terry suggested when Julio stepped on another twig and it cracked like a gunshot, at least to her ears. The woods, of all natural spaces, were always the most obscenely loud. Birds, bugs, wind, animals, sticks and streams--they all added up to an enormous cacophony of nature. Terry was reminded why she liked open meadows better. The somewhat haphazard searches of yesterday had been totally useless. Today they had Xavier's brain on their side and that made the area they were looking a lot smaller. They had been searching since there was enough light but there was still no sign of the missing girl.

Julio shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "It is fine by me, however you wish." Julio had thought it was standard procedure to walk with a group of people in a line in order to cover more ground and to not waste time going over and area that had already been covered, but if this was how they were going to do it, he would try his best. He frowned and looked off to his left. "How about I go down in the ravine?" He pointed. "You can hear me from far away, no? And I might be able to cover more ground quickly."

Terry frowned, "I can, yes. But you can't and I don't want you any further from me than you can hear. The objective is not to lose yet another person in these woods. If I have to shout to find you, I don't want to have to break trees in order to do it."

The boy pointed at the ravine again. "It will echo, no?" Not that the rock would amplify the sound for him or anything. His hearing would only be that of a 16-year-old boy with slight damage due to listening to his headphones at full volume. "We are wasting time, I shall move faster if I am down there."

The older girl sighed, "Fine. But stay close." She glanced at her watch, then up at the light filtering through the trees. "Check back in an hour, all right? We'll head straight down the ravine. The original campsite is just ahead anyway. She could have found her way back there."

"Okay," Julio said with a nod. He carefully navigated his way down the steep wall of the ravine, slipping and sliding a couple of times. His tennis shoes weren't exactly the best hiking material, but he didn't have much else in the way of hiking boots. He reached the bottom of the ravine, waving his arms so he wouldn't fall over, and then turned back to give Terry a thumbs up.

Terry waved back and indicated he should start moving down the ravine. In truth, she was rather glad that he'd moved away from her. It meant that there was one less thing making noises and interfering with the soundscape. They worked their way north slowly and Terry took care to place her feet like she'd been taught, making little noise in the forest cover.

Julio began to carefully pick his way among the refuse in the ravine. Years of dead leaf buildup along with rocks did not for fast passage make. Still, there was a chance the girl could have fallen into the ravine and broken something, and would have been unable to get help.

It took up most of the allotted hour for them to reach the campsite and Terry paused there, waiting for Julio to climb back up so they could figure out what to do next. She walked slowly around the perimeter, hoping to spot something that previous teams had missed--any sign of which way the girl had gone and in what condition. It felt like a fool's errand but it wasn't as though there was anything else she could do. Better to be meticulous than to miss something.

Janet liked to think of herself as a nice, cheerful person, but she was not feeling particularly nice or cheerful by the time two more strangers walked into her line of vision. In fact, she was downright flaming mad. She'd been shouting at people all day yesterday and all morning today, even stinging them, but all she got for her troubles was a swat. Oh, and there had been some sort of crazy whoosh! that had nearly knocked her into trees and ended up throwing her into the bushes more than once. What the hell had that been?

There was no reason these two would be able to notice her when no one else had, and her throat was rather sore from all of the screaming. Why should she bother trying to yell at them? Oh well, at least she could bug them. Maybe when she died out here, all cold and alone, she'd return to human-size and they'd discover her body, find out she could sting, and feel very, very sorry when they realized she'd been there all along.

"Ah!" Julio cried, and then slapped at his neck. "Mierda, something stung me." He rubbed at his neck and then looked around for the offending insect.

Terry blinked and came over to Julio to see, "It's still a bit cold for stinging bugs. Are you sure?" She made him hold still and tilted his head aside to look at his neck, frowning at the small wound. "Weird, doesn't really look like a bite." Terry stepped back and frowned as she concentrated, trying to narrow down the forest sounds to a particular set of insect wings then shrugged. "Could have been a spider that dropped from the trees maybe."

"I'll sting you next!" Jan told Terry crossly, not expecting either of them to hear her.

"You'll what?" Terry repeated blankly, still looking at Julio. But his mouth hadn't moved and in any case, he didn't usually sound like a girl. The furious buzzing of wings made her jump and duck out of the way as Julio's attacker returned for revenge. "What the hell?" she yelped as she tried to follow the flight of the bug, hands coming up to cover her hair protectively.

Julio didn't see anything that looked like a wasp or a bee, but he pulled his hand into his sleeves anyway, and tried to wave off the offending insect, away from Terry's hair. With that much hair, anything becoming trapped was liable to make whatever kind of bug this was even angrier.

"Fucking asshole!" Janet yelped as she avoided the gigantic sleeve-covered hands swatting at her. "I'll sting you again!"

There it was! Quick as a flash, Julio's hands shot out and closed around the insect. And then belatedly realized he had a stinging insect cupped between his two hands. He swore again.

"Idiot!" Jan laughed gleefully as she hit his hand hard, letting off a zap as she did.

Julio's swearing was distracting but it was also the last straw. "Julio, wait! Wait, let it go! It's talking! It's not a bug!" Terry grabbed his arm urgently, not entirely sure that she wasn't just losing her mind and hearing faeries.

The voice was a quiet one, though there was an edge that suggested it was shouting, but it was a real voice nevertheless.

"Are you insane? It's stinging me, whatever the hell it is!" He looked down at his clasped hands, one of which was starting to throb from his assailant's attacks, and then at Terry. "Hey, why don't you hold it so it will talk to you?"

"Fine, fine. Just don't hurt it!" Terry tugged his hands apart. "And speak softer, it must sound like we're shouting to it." She dropped her own voice to demonstrate. "Hello?"

Jan stung Julio again before leaping off of his hands and flying close to Terry's face, ready to give the girl her own personal sting. It wasn't fair for the boy to get all of the zaps, was it? "I am not an 'it' so stop calling me an… wait, you can hear me?" Jan was incredulous. "How can you hear me? No one else did!"

Terry jerked back as her jaw dropped, "Aye. I can hear you. You don't have to shout." She held out her hand, flat. "Will you..it's hard to see you when you're moving." She'd dropped her voice even further. "Who are you?"

Julio stuck his wounded hand in his mouth and swore again. "~Now we communicate with bees, fantastic,~" he muttered in Spanish. He had half a mind to flick the little whatever it was floating in front of Terry, but decided to wait and see what happened.

The tiny girl stepped on Terry's hand and flicked her wings. "Is this better? Who do you think I am? I mean, you and all the other people out here for the past two days have been looking for me, right?"

Once she was still it was easy to see that they were dealing with a very small, very naked version of the girl they'd been sent out here to find. Terry reached out and covered Julio's eyes with her free hand. "Sure you could have been a fairy or something," she said a bit weakly, "What happened?"

The boy frowned and tried to duck away from Terry's hand. "She stung me!" Julio protested ineffectually. "I'm not going to look, I am not a pervert!"

"A fairy?" Jan laughed. "Sorry. no. Haven't seen any faeries out here. Craziest thing that's happened, other than the whole shrinking thing of course, was that people kept thinking I was a bug and they kept trying to squash me! Oh yeah, and there was this crazy wind yesterday." Jan made a face at Julio. "Yeah, right, you're a guy. You so want to look!"

The movement of Jan's tiny feet on Terry's palm tickled and she had to work to keep her hand flat. "We should get you out of here. Everyone's been trying to find you." It would have been a lot easier if they'd known she could change her size. "I'm Terry, by the way. And this is Julio. He promises to stop looking."

"I am not looking!" Julio raised his eyes heavenward. He also didn't point out that Jan was so tiny he really couldn't see anything anyway. "Hello Jan, nice to meet you. Now let us go home, people are worried about you, and I need aspirin for my hand."

Unfortunately, the news is a little overwhelming for Vernon...until he comes up with his own solution.


Vernon Van Dyne had barely sat down in Charles' office before bursting out with "What's wrong with my daughter? Can't you people fix it? I can't take her home like that, for God's sake!"

He was not, to put it mildly, having a good day. The relief he'd felt at the news that Jan had been found washed away entirely when they'd gone on to tell him that they'd found her only a few inches tall. The wings they might have hidden, but this? It was a simply impossible situation.

"Mr. Van Dyne, I know that this is not easy news. Rest assured that we are doing everything we can to aid Janet to the best of our abilities. As far as we can determine, it does appear that Janet's miniature condition is a temporary stress based reaction," Charles said reassuringly. The man across from him was obviously agitated and showed no signs of calming down.

"So even if you fix her this time, it could happen again? Maybe even in public? That's not--" Vernon scrubbed a hand across his face, trying to get a grip on himself. "I fancy myself as an open-minded man, Professor Xavier. More than most, at any rate, even if I. .. Jan's my daughter. I have to admit I never considered having a mutant child, but although her condition's been an adjustment for all of us it's an adjustment I like to think I've made. But this. .. I watch the news. It's just not safe for mutants. I thought if we could keep it a secret she could avoid all that, but not if she's going to be an inch tall every time something startles her!"

"There is that potential, yes," Charles said, steepling his hands and leaning forward slightly.

"I would be remiss if I attempted to guarantee you that Janet would never again have complications due to her mutation in the future. I cannot make that promise to any of my students." Charles paused to consider his next words carefully, to strike the balance between comforting the man in front of him grieving the idea of a normal life for his daughter and reminding him that being a mutant was part of his daughter and had been prior to her most recent transition. "Saying it is not safe for mutants is like saying it is not safe for children - perhaps they are more at risk and certain precautions must be taken, but being a mutant will not prevent Janet from having a normal, healthy life."

"There are a few more people out there who want to hurt mutants than who want to hurt children . . . Your students, you said." Vernon's tone of voice was that of a man grabbing for a lifeline he hadn't seen. "Could Jan stay here? That's what you do, isn't it, teach mutants to control what they can do? You've taken safety into account, you must have done. And it might be good for her, being around more people like her. I know a teenage girl's favorite complaint is that her father doesn't understand her, but when it comes to this sort of thing . . . well, I really don't."

Charles smiled in understanding at the man across from him. He'd been expecting the question since the beginning of the meeting and he could sense the relief the man was feeling at the idea that there was a solution that didn't involve bringing Janet home. "Janet staying here is an option that we could definitely discuss. In her current state, I would have highly recommend she stay here if you had not suggested it, as the staff here are well able to navigate instructing...unusual students."

"Well, I'll talk to her about it--I'm sure she'll see it's for the best. It's the logical solution." Vernon nodded firmly, the very picture of a man used to getting his own way. "Tuition's no object, of course."

"Very well," Charles said. "I will have my staff draw up the paperwork and find someone to escort you to see Janet. I am sure you are more than anxious to see her." The slightly chiding tone was ameliorated by the compassion in the older man's eyes.

"Yes, of course," Vernon replied shamefacedly, abruptly recalled to his manners. "I'm sorry, Professor Xavier, I've been at my wit's end. . . thank you for finding her, and being willing to help her."